The television show Arrow is a hard hitting action series about the Arrow’s battles against the criminals in his hometown of Starling City. It is based on the Green Arrow comic book series. Arrow is the secret identity of Oliver Queen, played by Stephen Amell, who is a member of the wealthy Queen family. He was born on April 18th 1985. He is your typical young rich kid so, of course, he likes partying, sleeping with beautiful women, getting into fights and does not take his life seriously at all. He even dropped out of four Ivy League colleges. As for his appearance, his height is 6′ 1” and he has medium-length blonde hair. He dresses very informally. He wears stylish jackets, dress shirts, trousers and shoes but his shirt is nearly always unbuttoned and he very rarely wears a tie.
He, his father, Robert, and some other people go for a ride on Robert’s yacht. The yacht ends up experiencing problems at sea and sinks to the bottom of the . However, he, his father, Robert, and another man make it to a life raft. Later on, his father makes Oliver promise that he rights some of his wrongs. Then Robert figures out that there is not enough food and water for all three of them and decides to kill the other man and himself in order to give his a son a better chance of survival. Oliver ends up marooned on an island where he finds a diary that belonged to his father.
The contents of the pages of the diary are written in subsonic, ultraviolet invisible ink. So Oliver needed something that will pick up the sub-visible variations in the UV spectrum to see the writing in the diary. By happenstance, Oliver eventually figures out that using a fire will allow him to see the contents of the diary.
It contains the names of all of the people in Starling City who are destroying the city with their criminal activities. He decides to honor his father’s wishes by bringing these criminals to justice. He spends 5 years on the island where he befriends a native, Yao Fei, who teaches him to be an expert archer and martial artist. While he is stranded on the island, he is brutally tortured. Eventually, twenty percent of his body contains scar tissue. Yao Fei is eventually killed and Oliver decides to wear his clothes to honor him.
When he returns to Starling City, he changes his lifestyle and lead a more purposeful and meaningful life to honor his father’s dying wish. He decides to use his martial arts expertise along with a compound bow and various trick arrows and darts to take down the city’s criminals which means that he has to kill some of them. His activities make him a celebrity. Some people think he is a hero and other people, including the police, think he is a vigilante. He is often referred to as ‘the hood guy’ or just ‘the hood’.
Eventually, a dark archer shows up in Starling City. This evil archer commits murders by shooting arrows into people and wants people to think that Oliver Queen’s archer perpetrated these crimes. His proficiency with a bow and arrow and his hand-to-hand combat skills are on par with Oliver Queen’s. His wardrobe is all black and looks very similar to Oliver Queen’s archer wardrobe. They eventually confront each other and they battle to a draw. At the end of the episode, we find out that the evil archer is Malcom Merlyn, who is Tommy’s father.
Oliver is skilled in hand-to-hand combat and uses an array of punches, kicks and submission holds to subdue his opponents. He breaks a lot of people’s necks on the show. Oliver is very agile and can perform various gymnastic moves including handstands, flips and somersaults. He can climb quickly over a fence or up a building and hang from a ceiling. He is familiar with stealth techniques that allow him to get into and out of buildings without being noticed.
Oliver believes that guns are weapons of emotion and unpredictability and they can end up killing innocent people so he chooses not to use them during his crime-fighting activities. Anyway, he is so adept at archery that he does not need guns even if he is fired upon by multiple people with automatic weapons. He is deadly accurate with his bow and arrows and he can fire arrows in rapid succession. Oliver does not use regular arrows. Some of his arrows contain explosives. Some of his other arrows allow him to get into or out of buildings. He can hit a building with one of his arrows that is attached to a rope and slide down the rope to get to the other building or use the rope to swing over to the other building. He can even throw darts with great accuracy from a 100 feet away to disarm anyone who points a gun at him.
Oliver cannot take down all of the criminals by himself so he enlists the help of his bodyguard, John Diggle. He served in the Army and spent five years in Afghanistan so he has the requisite skills to aid Oliver in his mission. If Oliver is preoccupied with something else and the need arises, Diggle or Dig, as Oliver occasionally calls him, will put on the Arrow costume and deal with some of these criminals himself. There is even one episode where he trains his girlfriend, Helena, to help him out. She wears a long leather jacket and puts on green eye makeup just like Oliver. However, she does not wear a hood and she uses a crossbow instead of a long bow. She can definitely handle herself in a fistfight.
Since he made a promise to his father to right his wrongs, he goes from being a frivolous person to being a more serious person and it showed in his appearance. His hair is a lot shorter and he has a small mustache and some stubble. He also dresses a little more formally. He wears a suit and tie and his shirt is buttoned all of the way to the top. Although, while he is in public, he wants to give people the impression that he has not changed and still loves drinking and being a bad boy. He wants to put up this public facade to try to hide his secret life as a vigilante. I guess he got this idea from Bruce Wayne in those Dark Knight movies.
The costume that Arrow wears when he is fighting crime at night is inspired by what Yao Fei wore while they were marooned on the island. Arrow wears a beautiful green leather jacket that has the top of a green sleeveless hoodie sewn on the outside of it. The hoodie has a big green hood attached to it. When he puts the hood on, it covers his entire forehead which makes it really hard to figure out who he really is. The hoodie used to belong to Yao Fei. Oliver decided to use it as his own after Yao Fei was killed in Season 1. Oliver also wears a green sweater, black gloves, green leather pants and black boots with rubber soles. Oliver uses several different long bows and a crossbow. The bow that is his primary weapon is his compound bow that is made out of carbon fiber. The tension on the bow is 150 pounds. He has a green quiver full of green-colored customized arrows attached to the right side of his back by a strap that goes across his chest. Attached to his left forearm is a gauntlet that holds his flechettes, also known as darts. These arrows and darts are capable are carrying recording devices. He carries a total of twenty four arrows and flechettes. Oliver also has a hip quiver or holster that is attached to his right thigh. He uses it to store his medicinal herbs.
The Green Arrow comic book character wears a green mask that only covers the areas around his eyes to make it harder to identify him. During the first season of this series, instead of wearing a green mask, Oliver Green decides to put green face paint around the areas near his eyes to obscure his face. Sometime during the second season, Barry Allen, who eventually becomes the Flash, gives him a green mask as a gift and Oliver decides to wear it instead. While he is dressed as this vigilante, he uses a device that allows him to speak with a deeper voice to prevent anyone from identifying him through his voice which is another idea he probably got from the Dark Knight movies directed by Christopher Nolan.
It shouldn’t be difficult to find the clothing for a good Arrow costume. The most distinctive parts of his costume are the leather jacket, hoodie, eye makeup, bow and quiver. You can just visit a thrift store and look for a used green leather jacket, pants, hoodie and black gloves and boots. If you can’t find what you are looking for at a thrift store, then you can always try ebay.com or amazon.com. Ebay would be a better option if you want to save a lot of money. If you are on a budget or do not want to go through the trouble of making an exact replica of his costume, then you can go with a robin hood costume which usually comes with a green top along with a green hood. You can buy a long bow and a quiver full of arrows from just about anywhere.
He carries a device in his right wristband that allows him to detonate his explosive arrows
If your budget allows it, you should buy a voice changer that will alter your voice the way Oliver Queen alters his when he is fighting crime. It should cost less than $20. You can easily purchase one online.
One of the things that he says to every criminal in his father’s diary that he confronts right before he dispenses justice is ‘You have failed this city.’
